“We really just wanted everyone to come together and meet our police officers, get to know them, and for them to get to know us, too,” Ansley said. “We’ve been successful having a great relationship and we just want to keep that up.”

Ansley is the community advocate for the block watch in the Cedar Hill and East Rock neighborhoods, where residents got to know their local police officers over free pizza Tuesday evening at Vivid Imaginations Hall on State Street.

The Pizza with a Cop event was part of community policing efforts made by District 7 Manager Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur, the neighborhood block watch and local businesses.

“We always say keeping a community safe takes more than just us police. We need everyone to be a part of that effort — residents, businesses, people who come visit, it’s all of us,” Abdussabur said. “We want to continue to build new relationships, make the ones we already have even stronger, and that’s what I hope we’re doing here tonight.”

Other city neighborhoods hold similar events throughout the year. Other community policing efforts in District 7 have included community forums, Koffee with a Cop and implementing a new way for police to communicate with residents via the messaging phone application WhatsApp, through which residents can report suspicious activity and other safety concerns. Police use the WhatsApp to share information about crime in the area.

“One of the challenges about community policing is having to come up with new ideas to keep people engaged and also still make sure you’re also doing police work,” Abdussabur said. “This is police work and keeping the community involved.”

Ward 10 Alder Anna Festa said the event was “a wonderful opportunity” for the community to get to know the officers who patrol the area, which she believe is important so residents are not intimidated when interacting with law enforcement.

“I’m happy to say that we have a district manager who is very responsive to our needs, is very responsive to community policing. And we have to remember what community policing is. It is community. It is we all as residents and police officers come together to look out for our neighborhood,” Festa said. “It’s all of our responsibility to keep or neighborhood safe.”

“The community has been awesome. I think its important for the small businesses to give back to the community because without you guys I wouldn’t be able to feed my kids if you guys didn’t come in and help us out,” Holmes told the crowd at the event. “If everybody helps each other things like this are possible. She (Ansley) can’t do it alone, he (Abdussabur) cant do it alone, but together we can do some cool stuff.”

Tammy Jones, owner of Vivid Imaginations Hall, donated the space for the evening.

“Anything that’s going to make our community a little bit better and us as residents more aware, I’m all for it,” Jones said.

Ansley said she hopes the community policing efforts in her neighborhood spread to the rest of the city.

“They’re just like us, they’re just doing their job and their job is to make us safe. We should help them in that process and so anything we can do to help them help us I think it’s a win-win.”